The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un made a speech at the groundbreaking ceremony of a hospital and leisure complex in Kangdong County for the Regional Development 20×10 Policy.

The full text of the speech is as follows:

Comrades,

Dear residents of Kangdong County, who have turned out as one in the first stage of struggle of the new year with soaring confidence and patriotic enthusiasm,

Officers and men of the Guards hero construction unit and the 124th Regiment and members of the non-permanent promotion committee, who will open the prelude to the heroic struggle of 2025 that should be etched as another year of great victory in history,

The construction work for 2025, a meaningful year that will further enrich the successes of the first-stage pioneering struggle for the comprehensive development of socialism, is now beginning with the construction of a hospital and leisure complex here in Kangdong County.

This can be called a starting point of our efforts to achieve the ideals and ambition of the Party and government to guarantee the people their rights and interests, promote their health and build a brighter and rosier future for them. But as I have greeted the moment when the construction of the projects, which we have long aspired to implement for the precious people of this country and their vibrant beautiful life, has finally been put on the stage of execution, my heart beats with delight at the thought that we have decided on and made preparations for a truly worthwhile and proud task.

I feel happiest that the sincerity of our Party and government will bring another wealth to the regional people. It is also gratifying that the eye-opening changes in the new era will take place in another part of our country.

Through this historic groundbreaking ceremony, we are making a meaningful start to accelerate the building of a civilized and prosperous country by instilling hope and optimism in the people across the country that they will receive advanced medical services and enjoy a civilized material and cultural life in their own regions, as well as by bringing about substantial and new qualitative changes in the regions.

At this moment, when we are taking another giant step towards great changes, I extend great encouragement and warm militant greetings to the officers and men of the Guards unit and the 124th Regiment of the Capital City Defence Corps, who have advanced to the new construction sites by carrying forward their tradition of standing faithfully in the vanguard of the struggle for bringing about the prosperity of the country and wellbeing of the people.

I also extend militant greetings to the members of the design sector at all levels and the non-permanent promotion committee for regional development, who have contributed to making us launch into these projects in a short span of time through a strenuous struggle, as well as to the officials and working people in the building-materials industry and other relevant sectors, who are firmly supporting the vast construction projects with unprecedented increased production, true to the decisions of the plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee for more expansive and substantial rejuvenation of the regions.

Comrades,

The first process of all our work has always been like this, but I want to make clear first what an important and great meaning we attach to the projects to be launched soon.

This is because herein lies the answer to why we must build them at a time when vast construction projects are underway and it is hard to enlist spare manpower and why we must complete them in a wonderful way in time and without fail at that.

Our Party’s plan for regional development is to ensure that the regional people not only enjoy a material life that is enjoyed by the citizens of the capital city but also lead a life in good health and without any worry in an environment that is as cultured and hygienic as in the capital city.

In other words, it can be said that the ideal result of the regional development policy is that the whole country should be put on an even cultural level, too, by building up the regions to be as wonderful as the capital city is and transforming the environment of the regional people for a cultured life.

Now it has almost become a fait accompli that with modern light-industry factories to be built in every city and county in ten years to come, the regional people will surely be able to attain the level of urbanites in material and economic life. Yet it is more than obvious that this is not all that can eliminate the ingrained cultural lag and backwardness of the regions.

At present, cities and counties are not equipped with adequate facilities for providing proper medical services to the inhabitants, nor do they have any decent welfare service facilities; so they hardly befit the cultural centres in the respective regions and the cultural standards of the regional people are far lower than those of the citizens of the capital city.

The signs of backward and underdeveloped character of the regions can be found more largely in the sphere of cultural life than in that of material life, and the most serious of the gaps between the urban communities and the rural ones is to be seen in the sectors of public health, hygienic arrangement, science and education.

As it is impossible ever to eliminate this cultural backwardness of the regions if we put off the necessary endeavour for this or that reason while refusing to accept this stark reality and simply discussing the feasibilities, the Party Central Committee made an unusual, revolutionary determination to carry out a decisive action of injecting advanced science, technology and civilization into all cities, counties and even mountain regions across the country and thus advancing forward without letup towards the already-defined goals of regional development.

There is another important point worth mentioning in our proposal for setting it as one of our immediate tasks to build modern public health facilities and multifunctional cultural amenities in cities and counties.

The principal method we should employ in developing the regions in a comprehensive way is to help them build up their own self-sustaining capability in every way while providing state guidance and assistance to them.

In other words, the state should provide sufficient material and technical foundations and conditions to the regions so that they can stand on their own feet and, on this basis, let them build up their own forces and potentials strong enough to achieve steady and sustainable development.

In view of both the lessons we have drawn from the annals of regional development which has been stagnant over the past decades, and the prospective requirements that regional development should be a powerful motive force for the development of our state, the issue of each region building their own self-supporting development capability is the key to success.

The most important factor of regional transformation is to be identified in the forces of their own, which can lead their economic and cultural rejuvenation, that is, the spiritual and cultural preparedness of the regional people.

It is necessary to have well-qualified economic and technical forces in order to ensure good operation of the modern regional-industry factories which are now under construction in full swing; it is also necessary to train talented personnel systematically in order for each city or county to make effective use of their own characteristics to pave varied and unique roads for their development.

The faster the regional development gets nationwide, the higher such a demand will be; what is essential and inevitable to this end is the leisure complex whose construction we are just going to launch.

We can say that the multifunctional leisure complex will, by providing the regional people with latest science and nourishment of civilization without interruption, serve as a fertile land and a cradle for training them to be proud masters capable of running modern industry on their own and for identifying and training talented people.

I am sure that when the sci-tech learning base is furnished with high-performance IT means and databases of various up-to-date sci-tech achievements, it will be of great help to the regional population, young people and children in particular, in approaching closer to modern science and civilization and acquiring the insight and qualifications needed to lead their regional economic and cultural development.

The new leisure complex will be furnished with facilities for the people to see films and enjoy sports and cultural activities, commercial outlets with a clean sanitary environment, as well as various other welfare service facilities. Needless to say, such a cultural base will be very efficient in further enlightening the people, developing richer emotional feelings in them and training them to be pioneers and creators of a new culture.

If cities and counties are to function effectively not merely as a comprehensive unit of regional development but also as a regional base leading the cultural revolution in the countryside and maintaining economic and cultural ties between urban and rural communities, they must have the means and conditions necessary for expediting the process of assimilating the peasantry to the working class and the rural areas to the urban ones by promptly absorbing modern science and technology and actively disseminating advanced urban culture.

Should they not have such means and conditions, our rural communities will lag far behind modern civilization, and they will not be able to come closer to the threshold of the new era of the socialist countryside.

The conclusion we can draw from this is obvious.

Only when we eliminate the differences in the cultural and intellectual levels between the citizens of the capital city and regional people and between the urban and rural dwellers, can our new regional development policy fully display its validity and vitality as a policy designed for ensuring the eternal prosperity of our regions both in name and in reality and removing the urban-rural gaps fundamentally and permanently.

Building modern public health facilities and multifunctional bases for cultural activities in cities and counties is a crucial and most pressing task that is of great strategic significance in accelerating the simultaneous and balanced development of all fields and all regions and bringing forward the complete victory of socialism.

This is a task that brooks no further delay.

We are facing a decisive period when we should develop cities and counties strategically, proactively and consciously.

What we should bear in mind is that our generation has shouldered the responsibility for this great cause of historic significance, which is what we must undertake now.

The eternal prosperity of our regions precisely means the permanent future of our state and our style of socialism.

Comrades,

The leisure complexes we are planning to set up in cities and counties are something that has never been conceived of in regional construction, and we should almost blaze a trail in building modern hospitals.

In particular, a hospital is a functional building that requires technical compatibility from the lowest units of infrastructure to every one of its medical equipment and devices. Building it is dozens of times as costly as erecting an apartment block or an industrial facility. Setting up an adequately-equipped hospital is not so easy, because it requires advanced building techniques, expensive materials and large funds.

Despite this difficulty, we should build excellent hospitals in cities and counties as symbols of socialist public health in our era, which embody the Party’s plan for modernizing public health and its Juche-based idea of architectural aesthetic beauty.

The fact is that hospital construction in cities and counties is an important project we conceived of and worked out much earlier than when we planned the construction of industrial factories in the regions.

As a project for guaranteeing our people’s life and safety and promoting their health, this naturally takes the first priority among all other projects which our Party has planned and is pushing forward to transform our regions and build a cultured, prosperous state.

It is nonsensical to talk about the strength and development of a state and argue over the advantages of its system, if that state is unwilling and unable to take responsibility for its people’s life and health.

To take as an example, the public health situation in a country affords a glimpse into its political climate and level of civilization and the quality of life for its citizens. In this sense, public health can be said to represent the absolute values of a nation.

In the present era, laying solid foundations for the public health sector has presented itself as a matter that has a direct bearing on the security of a country and its future, and the demand for life protection and health promotion has grown rapidly. This being the case, our view and stand is that public health should naturally develop well ahead of the sectors related to the material and economic life.

Making our public health sector modern and advanced is the top priority of our Party and government.

Setting up modern hospitals in all cities and counties to bring advanced medical service facilities closer to the regional people and enable all of them freely to enjoy the benefits of modern medicine, at the same time as building a first-class general hospital in the capital city as befits the pivot and hub of our country’s public health sector so that its techniques, experiences and exemplary practices can spread across the country–this is the Party’s plan for the modernization of public health.

To put the reconstruction of hospitals in cities and counties in parallel with the construction of the general hospital in the capital city is in keeping with the mission of the socialist public health to take responsibility for the life and health of the entire population; it is also in full accord with the new regional development policy, and this is just the road to the fastest development based on the advantages of our system.

Today’s groundbreaking ceremony marks the starting point of this great road, a decisive step forward and a major watershed for the future.

So, this time I entrusted the country’s best group of designers with drawing up designs for city and county hospitals; I pointed to the necessity of meeting the specialized technical requirements in designing all the elements, ranging from the selection of sites, structural layout, distribution of buildings to arrangement of the line of flow, in ways that will be convenient for such medical services as diagnosis and treatment of patients and will preclude the occurrence of abnormalities including in-hospital infection.

I would like to add that the new hospitals to be built in cities and counties will be divided into four categories according to the population of each region. This year hospitals will be built here in Kangdong County and in Ryonggang County and the city of Kusong, one in each region and all these three of different sizes, on a trial basis.

This year we should build these hospitals as model facilities and accumulate experience in doing so. Then, starting next year, we are planning to set up hospitals in 20 cities and counties, one in each region, on an annual basis.

By the close of this year a modern hospital will go up here, and in the coming ten years, excellent medical service facilities will appear in all cities and counties. To think of this, I feel infinitely proud of our really worthwhile and valuable struggle.

The Party Central Committee will do its best to ensure that the regional population can receive advanced treatment at modern hospitals.

Kangdong County, ministries, national agencies and other relevant units should work in a responsible manner under a detailed plan to build up the ranks of medical workers and service staffs and enable new facilities to render a substantial contribution to promoting the residents’ health and well-being and developing the regional culture.

Responsibly making preparations for operation to ensure advanced services for the regional people should be done in parallel with the building work.

The most serious problem is that our public health workers have a limited understanding of a comprehensive modern medical facility and lack experience in operating its equipment, and that their academic qualifications and medical skills are not adequate enough.

It is important to organize technical sessions for medical workers so effectively that they can work properly after the inauguration of hospitals and ensure that technicians and skilled workers are well versed in their specialist fields.

In particular, it is necessary to make a strong demand on medical workers so that they stay up to date on diagnostic and therapeutic methods that are in keeping with the modern trends in medical development, improve their technical skills and qualifications, and increase their knowledge of foreign languages.

All officials, including leading cadres of the Party and government, should take a creative stand and attitude befitting masters in the effort to cement the foundations of the country’s public health sector, clearly find what they are obliged to do and play their due role in this regard.

Comrades,

We are faced with an important task of breathing a fresh life into our socialist public health.

The rapids of a new revolution in public health have risen to join the waves of the regional industry revolution which will soon sweep the whole of the country.

I affirm that our public health sector will newly develop as the soil for cultivating the strength of life of this country and as the strong roots of regional rejuvenation.

This year 2025 should be recorded in our country’s history as the first year of the public health revolution.

Let us remember this moment of today when our socialist public health has set sail for the new horizon of development.

Dear soldier-builders, who are courageously advancing in the vanguard of the construction revolution in our era,

The Party has always placed unshakable trust in the People’s Army’s outstanding revolutionary character and creative spirit.

Officers and men of the Guards hero construction unit have built wonderful monumental edifices representative of the era, supporting our Party’s sincerity for the people through their heroic and resourceful labour. In the same spirit as they displayed in doing so, they should fully demonstrate the mode of creation and versatile skills unique to them also in building the Kangdong County Hospital.

The commanding officers of the 124th Regiment should work in a sweeping way and with scrupulous care in the course of planning and directing the construction processes, so that the soaring morale of the soldier-masses can bring about great successes in construction. Then they can dynamically push ahead with the whole construction work according to the schedule.

Your unyielding offensive spirit and militant work style will encourage all the people to display patriotism and strive for increased production to glorify the 80th anniversary of the Party and its Ninth Congress.

I hope that all the soldier-builders, highly conscious that they are responsible for the frontline posts of the regional revolution, will work with utmost sincerity to ensure perfect quality of building work, and thus complete all the structures as excellent creations whose levels of specialization and functional qualities are fully guaranteed.

Let us never forget that the heavier burden our army bears, the earlier the new era of regional transformation will come and the greater benefits our beloved parents, brothers and sisters will enjoy.

My beloved comrades-in-arms,

Generals, officers and men of the People’s Army,

Let us all fight more courageously and more vigorously to achieve the great ideals of our people and the victory of our cause!